Animax Presscon Features Cosplayers

Animax Asia General Manager Gregory Ho is one of the most clued-in TV executives I’ve ever met. Unlike many people in mass media, he doesn’t think of his audience as buckets of passive eyeballs. He understands that, in today’s highly competitive media landscape, engagement is the name of the game.

Few displays of content engagement are more powerful than putting on an outlandish costume and becoming a fictional character in public. This is the emerging performance art called cosplay. Let’s face it: if you’re running around wearing a freaky costume acting like a cartoon character, for any reason whatsoever, you’re engaging pretty deeply with the content.

That’s why when Greg presented his anime cable channel’s 2010 lineup at a press conference last week, he brought in cosplayers to demonstrate this ultimate form of content engagement.

Leading the pack was Animax’s own K-On cosplay team, featuring Filipina cosplay queenAlodia Gosiengfiao as Yui and her sister Ashley as Mio. Journalist Janeena Chan played Ritsu, while student Chienna Filomeno played Mugi. K-On is an anime driven by character idiosyncrasies, and the girls portray those idiosyncrasies in the above photo. Mio’s about to smack Ritsu on the head; Ritsu’s thinking up new mischief to do; Mugi’s looking gentle and sweet; Yui’s looking naive and cute.

You’re probably familiar with Alodia’s and Ashley’s reputations as world-famous cosplayers. The sisters most recently performed at Anime Festival Asia 2009 in Singapore. Thirteen-year-old Chienna’s quite a promising newbie; she’s been cosplaying for only a year, and this is her first corporate cosplay gig.

The most surprising revelation at the party was Janeena. As it turns out, she’s a formally trained theater actress. This first-time cosplayer managed to stay perfectly in character throughout the night. Ritsu was the one who pulled all the K-On protagonists into the band; true to her character, Janeena was the one who pulled all the cosplayers onto the dance floor.

Janeena even pulled off this epic photobomb while I was goofing around with Ashley. This is exactly the sort of crazy prank Janeena’s character would pull on Ashley’s character. Though totally new to the cosplay scene, Janeena’s clearly capable of the improvisational acting required to roleplay characters in costume.

As the night came to a close, Greg personally thanked the cosplayers for their contribution to the press conference. Because of the extreme level of engagement it requires, cosplay is a potent form of media consumer evangelism — and that night, the artform received direct recognition from the very industry it evangelizes. In this mashup culture, all industries should be so supportive of their most creative fans.

Watching an anime feels different after seeing its characters cosplayed well up close. All of a sudden, you can clearly picture what the characters, their behaviors, and their interactions would look like in real life. All of a sudden, you discover a whole new way to appreciate the anime itself.

That’s exactly what Alodia, Ashley, Janeena, and Chienna have accomplished with their K-On cosplay. Thanks for making the series even more enjoyable for me, girls. 🙂